I have been mentioning the Champion's Games to my party for the entire campaign through a few subtle mentionings - flyers, overheard conversations, etc.
My question is this: With my party already interested in participating, and they've already figured out that they need to do some digging to find a license, is Celeste's involvement really necessary for the remainder of the campaign?
Would it be okay, as far as the future campaign is concerned, if they (with the right Gather Info checks) discover Ekaym on their own?
I just hate to have another adventure handed to them by DM fiat - Them finding Ekaym is a bit more organic.
Sure, Celeste is totally superfluous, it you think you've already got enough NPCs she's a good one to drop, especially if no-one in your game knows about the last adventure path (where she had a brief cameo too, apparently). She does work for Tenser (Manzorian), but then you can point the PC's at him through Eligos and/or other existing means. I left her in simply because I liked the idea of the players meeting various NPCs, some of who were important and some of which were pretty much just fluff - more relistic for me, otherwise the players expect every NPC to be critical to the game (and my players often assume most if not all NPCs are evil, although that's more a running joke about how they are drawn, for example Eligos was "obviously evil" because he scowled so much ;-)
In my game, Celeste featured more prominently, but that was basically my own invention... At one stage, one player could only play from time to time so we split the group into two - the main group did a side-quest, while the PC whose player couldn't join us much teamed up with Celeste and a PC from my old campaign. Celeste etc went off to look for where the Spire was (I hate the whole teleport thing, except as a means to get back home), following some clues that lead them into the jungles in search of an ancient map that showed its location (I used part of an adventure from the previous adventure path here; a quick dungeon delve that Celeste helped them find out about in Cauldron). So Celeste was run by one player, who kept real true identity under wraps for most of it (until they actually hit the spire). I was hoping Celeste would get herself killed in the Spire, and had primed the player to play her as over-confidant and somewhat reckless. As it turned out, and she got isolated and was cut down by the two sword archons (the Geladrin did not exist at that point), then the other two (both spell-casters; Celeste was the only party "fighter") used word of recall to get out of there. No fudging required on my part there, I hit the jackpot as far as my plans went. Which meant that the fallen Geladrin was actually Celeste, corrupted and re-animated by the power of the Spire (which is exactly as I'd hoped for). Made for a great addition to the story, as the group finally re-merged and went back into the Spire, surprised to find Celeste again (although this time, being better prepared, they wiped the floor of all the fallen angels, surprising even themselves with how it went so much better than the previous time).
I've been working on changing this aspect of the AP as well. I really didn't want to introduce yet another two NPC's who would just be names to my players. Celeste will have no particular meaning to them. Therefore I cut out both Ekaym and Celeste and replaced them with the Starmane family. The party had already rescued Ilya from the doppelgangers, so I decided to make Lahaka her sister. The head of the Starmane family has heard good things about these adventurers from Ilya and so is willing to hire them to continue his search for his daughter.
In my campaign, we just had a new player join as a rogue. This rogue has already been hired by the Starmane family to search for Lahaka. He spent 3 days hiding in Raknian's palace only to find nothing. (Therefore relieving me of having to detail out the palace and all the guards.) He was spotted in his attempt to leave the palace and sometime later found himself attacked by drow. One thing led to another and he was rescued by our band of adventurers from Zyrxog's clutches just before becoming breakfast.
In the end I've really only cut out one NPC (Celeste), and changed Ekaym to a Starmane, but the story is a bit more inter-related. I think that this is a good thing for my campaign, though perhaps it's not too realistic, as the whole world seems to revolve around the PCs. But that's kinda what it's all about, I suppose.
The only real reason to include here is because she makes cameo's in all the APs so if your players will play more then one I'd use her. Otherwise she can easily be dropped.
Here's a conundrum... I'm running an evil party through the path, whose players also have done or are playing the other two paths. I feel almost obligated to include Celeste since its a nod to the other paths that I feel the players will appreciate. Yet, a bunch of "Hextor!" yelling, Lawful Evil, order-at-any-cost PCs are going to have a hard time relating to the inherently Chaotic Good, freedom loving Celeste.. Perhaps the old "Enemy of my Enemy" axiom might work here? Has anyone else ran a mostly evil-aligned group through the 'Champion's Belt'?